Last week's Talk Cinema screening: A Christmas Tale

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I haven't seen "Rachel Getting Married," but some audience members compared this French film to it, in that a highly dysfunctional family gathers and sorts out issues. However, they said that A Christmas Tale was superior because of its well-rounded characters and interesting situations. (I especially appreciated the portrayal of the two young grandsons, who acted like real children, not like posed, wisecracking Hollywood brats.)

Anyway, this film centers on an older couple, Abel and Junon, played by Jean-Paul Roussillon and Catherine Deneuve, whose three adult children gather at their house for Christmas. Of course, they're all full of issues. Junon has just been diagnosed with a rare blood disease, and her only hope is to find a bone marrow donor. Ironically, earlier in life, she and Abel lost their oldest son to another blood disease, and their second son, Henri, was originally conceived as a potential bone marrow donor but didn't match. He has always been the odd one out in the family, especially and unreasonably hated by his sister Elizabeth, who has a schizophrenic teenage son. All seems well with the youngest son, Ivan, the father of the two boys mentioned in the previous paragraph, but there are real complications in his marriage, too. Meanwhile, Abel watches everything with an affectionate shake of the head and fixes things behind the scenes.

In a sense, not much happens in this film, and some of the things that do happen are predictable. But as Roger Ebert used to say, you care about these characters (except for Elizabeth--I thought she needed to get over herself), and you feel as if you're dropping in on their lives and dropping back out again.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Thanks for the heads up!

This one is playing at my local indie film theater too! Maybe next Sunday! :-)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Actually, if you can find "I've Loved You So Long," I liked that one better

There's a thread about it in here somewhere.